If Leggings Are Pants, Slippers Can Be Shoes

Would anyone be fooled into believing we're heading to the gym with slippers on?

10/06/2016 12:09 PM AEST
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Updated
15/07/2016 12:53 PM AEST

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Sadly, my slippers didn't look like this...

Before the rain arrived in Sydney, it was starting to get cold. Not the bitter cold we complain about almost a week after we stop complaining that summer will never end, but cold enough to bring out the jumpers and remind us that electric blankets exist.

It was on one such day that I stepped out the house, ready to go to an informal appointment right after dropping my son at school. I had showered, brushed my teeth, managed to slap on some make up and get dressed. I had even dragged a comb through my hair. I was on top of things.

I dropped my son at school, turned up the podcast I was listening to and arrived early for my appointment where I waited patiently in the reception area. It was only after the person I was meeting came to pick me up from the reception area that I felt my feet were a bit heavy... and a bit too comfortable.

In fact, my feet were making a bit of a clomping sound as I walked up the corridor -- a sound which wasn't all that familiar -- and so I quickly glanced down and almost turned around and ran away. But, of course, I couldn't run because I was wearing ugg boots. Warm, snuggly, very old and slightly tattered fluffy slippers.

As I tried to make my excuses for being comfortable, but perhaps inappropriately dressed for anything other than walking around the house and dropping my son at school, I decided nothing was going to work. It would sound unbelievable if I said I didn't actually know I was wearing great wads of sheepskin around my feet, it would sound pretentious if I tried to say these were my "dropping the child at school" shoes, and it would sound unprofessional if I apologised for wearing slippers. Actually, it might have been unprofessional, but I was choosing not to focus on that.

And so I decided to just say nothing. The man I was meeting (and the receptionist and everyone else who saw me that morning) was just going to have to believe I chose to leave the house with sheepskin around my feet. They might think I'm quirky, maybe even fashion forward. Definitely comfortable.

After the meeting, when I could focus more freely on my feet, I began to convince myself that I had merely worn the equivalent of leggings as pants, but on my feet.

The best thing about this, or at least the way that I placated myself, was that leggings as pants is now an actual, legitimate fashion choice. It may be called "active wear" or "leisure wear" or even "gym clothes", but we know that thousands of people are walking around wearing leggings as pants and justifying it as a fashion choice by using a trendy name.

The leggings phenomenon has taken over in such a way that we hardly even look twice when we see people at the supermarket or trotting around the suburbs in lycra-type leggings with weird mesh pieces built in (which I assume are meant for air flow but may well be a fashion trend about which I have no idea). So why can't we introduce that same joy to our feet?

Given that winter is about to set in, I think I might be on to a very timely and fortuitous fashion trend. If our legs are going to be comfortable without the hassle of belts, zips, pockets or even structure, we might as well extend that same courtesy to our feet.

The only setback I can see is that we are not going to fool anyone into believing that we are headed off to gym with slipper boots on....